Alan Clayson

Alan Clayson (born 3 May 1951, Dover, Kent) is an English singer-songwriter, author and music journalist. He gained popularity in the late 1970s as leader of the band Clayson and the Argonauts. In addition to contributing to publications such as Record Collector, Mojo and Folk Roots, he subsequently established himself as a prolific writer of music biographies. Among his many books are Backbeat, which details the Beatles‘ early career in Germany, Ringo Starr: Straight Man or Joker?, and biographies of Jacques Brel, the Yardbirds, Serge Gainsbourg and Edgard Varèse.

According to Clayson, his first band was Ace and the Crescents, which he formed in the mid 1960s with fellow students from “a truly desperate grammar school for boys near Aldershot [in Hampshire]”. He recalls visiting the Beatles‘ Apple Corps headquarters in 1968, in an unsuccessful attempt to have Apple publish his poetry. With beat music, psychedelia, chanson, mediaeval and modern classical among inspirations, he formed Clayson and the Argonauts in the late 1970s. The band received some highly favourable reviews in the UK music press, attaining what Melody Maker termed “a premier position on rock’s Lunatic Fringe”, yet only achieved minor commercial success in Northern Europe.

In addition to Backbeat, he has written books on each of the four Beatles, beginning with the 1990 publication of The Quiet One: A Life of George Harrison. The four titles were re-released as a box set in 2003 by Sanctuary Publishing. Clayson’s volume on Ringo Starr, subtitled Straight Man or Joker?, remains a rare work dedicated to the drummer’s career. In his overview of the most popular Beatles books, for Rough Guides, Chris Ingham writes that the four volumes “have been described as Beatles-flavoured teabags in a cup full of Clayson”, due to the author’s tendency to refer to his own musical career and insert his “harmless prejudices” in the narrative. Ingham concedes, however, that “as a second-generation veteran of the British beat scene, [Clayson’s] point of view usually contains a certain authenticity and authority.”